Publisher's Synopsis
"Quiara Hudes was the sharp-eyed girl on the stairs while her family of ""loud Latinas"" danced in her grandmother's tight South Philly kitchen, ""frizzy hair cut short, bangs teased into stiff clouds, sweat glistening in the summer fog, pamper-butt babies weaving between legs."" Quiara was awed and terrified by her aunts and uncles and cousins, all larger-than-life survivors of epic, bloody battles: they'd gone through wars abroad, from Vietnam to Iraq, and wars at home, with crack and AIDS and mandatory minimum sentences. Her family became her private pantheon, a gathering of powerful orishas with tragic wounds. She vowed to tell their stories--but first she'd have to get off the stairs and join the dance; she'd have to touch those wounds and feel their magic. This is the story of the Perez family, told through four cousins. Sean, who went to prison, became a teenage dad, and wrote a novel behind bars; Elliot, who went to Iraq and returned with a leg so chewed up they never thought he'd walk again, but turned himself into a haunted superhero, skydiving and exorcising his demons all over the world; Othet, who never went anywhere, at least physically, but who travelled out of her mind and then back into fragile sobriety, anchored and anchoring the family house on Stella Street; and Quiara, the observer, storyteller, and secret-keeper, who would go on to write a Pulitzer-winning trilogy of plays inspired by her cousins and the world she could never leave behind. This is the story of a wild, tragic, profoundly alive family, but it's also an inspired exploration of home, family, memory, and belonging, narrated by the obsessed girl who fought to become an artist so she could capture the world she loved in all its delicate beauty. The book is framed by the three opening nights of the three plays, the moments when ""the house lights dimmed and my cousins grabbed my hands and whispered, 'Qui Qui, I hope you didn't screw it up.'""
